Cinderella has become modern society’s default princess; Charles Perrault’s version of the classic tale is the model for nearly all retellings. A young girl’s father remarries a woman with two daughters of her own. The new stepmother and stepsisters force the girl to complete the dirtiest chores, thus earning her titular nickname “Cinderella.” Cinderella’s luck changes when the king’s son announces a ball, which the stepmother prevents Cinderella from attending. After the three other women have left, a fairy godmother visits Cinderella and transforms various objects in order to allow the girl’s attendance. So beautiful is Cinderella that her appearance at the ball attracts the prince himself. After a night of dancing, the clock strikes midnight and Cinderella runs out of the ball, leaving behind the love struck prince and a glass slipper. A search for the owner of the glass slipper ensues, Cinderella is found, and the tale ends in marriage. Marissa Meyer’s Cinder takes this basic form, and pushes it into New Beijing, a futuristic city under threat of plague and invasion by Lunars, or moonpeople. Cinder, the novel’s Cinderella, is a sarcastic cyborg mechanic; while Cinder shows more personality an"d spunk than her source material, throughout the novel she can be as passive. Cinder’s agency comes and goes throughout the narrative, growing stronger and stronger as the novel goes on. Through her varying levels of agency, Cinder highlights a young girl’s struggle to find her independence against prejudice, amidst a plague, and alongside a “perfect” prince.

Cinder’s societal limits on cyborgs closely mirror historical patriarchal limitations on women; the laws of New Beijing recognize Cinder as the property of her stepmother, her guardian. As in the original fairy tale, Cinder has no choice but to work for the benefit of her stepmother; Cinder’s wages from her mechanic work are deposited straight into Adri, her stepmother’s account, and Cinder must sneak around Adri’s back in order to pay for simple necessities, such as a foot that fits. This lack of independence culminates into something much darker when Ardi volunteers Cinder for plague research, which tests cures on cyborgs. Cinder’s attempts to struggle or protest fail quickly. As the med-droids come to take her, Cinder cries that no one can force her into this testing, but Adri’s reply swiftly reveals differently: “‘Yes,’ said Ardi, her own breathing labored, ‘I can. So long as you are under my guardianship… You are a sacrifice I will never regret’” (Meyer 64). Ardi’s quick dismissal of Cinder’s desires, and the brute force necessary to take Cinder to the testing lab show merely prove that Cinder is unable to have full agency under New Beijing’s laws and customs.

Not only is she unable to have independence in New Beijing, she must face constant reminder of this prejudicial culture. Citizens of New Beijing see cyborgs as second-class, as something disgusting; through this Meyer makes a significant deviation from Perrault’s tale, whose moral declares: “Women’s beauty is a treasure / That we never cease to admire” (453). Perrault’s moral, as Barbara Walker notes in Feminist Fairy Tales, reminds us “to be decorative is the customary female function in these old stories” (ix). Cinder is not the beautiful, oppressed girl of Perrault’s tale. Her worth comes not from her beauty or her good nature, but from her perseverance against her designation. Cinder in fact first meets Kai, the prince, because he has heard that she is the best mechanic in New Beijing. Although she has this worth, Cinder does subscribe to the thought that she, a cyborg, is second-class. In doing so, Cinder passively allows her autonomy to be stripped from her, much like women before her who believed they were second-class to men. Meyer’s New Beijing is structured so that prejudices run so deep that even those affected by the system believe in it. Cinder demonstrates this belief, telling herself that she “wouldn’t fit in at a formal ball anyway… She would just end up sitting off the dance floor and making fun of the girls who swooned to get Prince Kai’s attention, pretending she wasn’t jealous. Pretending it didn’t bother her” (Meyer 30). The prejudice that surrounds Cinder strips her independence and places her in a box from which she, in the beginning of the novel, can’t break free. The threat of plague constantly challenges Cinder’s search for agency. The aforementioned struggle of independence against her stepmother arose in the first place because of the plague. Cinder’s stepmother “volunteers” her for testing because Peony, Cinder’s stepsister, contracted the plague presumably because of Cinder. However, when at the medical facility, Cinder proves to be different than the usual volunteer. Cinder is immune to the plague. Through this importance, this peculiarity, Cinder truly begins find her independence. Dr. Erland, the doctor leading the search for a plague cure, facilitates and acknowledges that Cinder indeed has autonomy, despite the cultural prejudice that has suppressed said autonomy. When Dr. Erland expresses Cinder’s importance, Cinder lays out the terms of the agreement:

“‘All right, so long as we’re clear—I am here on a volunteer basis now, which means I can leave at any point I want to. No questions, no arguments… And I do expect payment, like you said, but I need a separate account. Something my legal guardian can’t access. I don’t want her to have any idea I’ve agreed to do this, or any access to the money… If you do find an antidote, or anything that even holds promise as an antidote, I want [Peony] to be the first one to get it” (Meyer 101).

"Linh Cinder" by blindthistle

Here, Cinder not only finds her independence, but forces her way into it; it’s the first moment in her narrative where she takes control of her circumstances. Karlyn Crowley and John Pennington in “Feminist Frauds on the Fairies? Didacticism and Liberation in Recent Retellings of ‘Cinderella’” define a feminist fairy tale as one that “rattle[s] the foundational cages of the tale where the power structures reside” (304). By taking control of her experience at the medical center, Cinder is rattling the power structure, while still emulating the Cinderella of Perrault’s tale. Though Perrault’s Cinderella is, above all, beautiful, early on her goodness and gentleness is established; Cinder’s demand that her sister be the first to receive the vaccine signals a strong tie between the two women.

The plague creates an enormous complication for Cinder’s independence search, but it also creates friction between Ardi and Cinder. The tension culminates in a scene where Cinder truly begins to stand up for herself, a staunch difference from the source material. Ardi, surprised at Cinder’s return from the testing lab, lashes out at the cyborg; Cinder, rather than mumbling insults under her breath as before, matches her stepmother’s tone. Cinder makes it clear that, while she will abide by Ardi’s house rules, she will not silently suffer any longer. Again, Meyer uses the plague—here, the tension the plague creates—to demonstrate the steps Cinder takes in order to accept her independence.

Cinder’s search for autonomy often halts, rather than becomes strengthened, because of the Prince Charming character, Kai. She hides her mechanical parts from Kai, often causing herself discomfort in her attempt to conceal her identity, both as a cyborg and as a Lunar. Casey Cothran in “Dancing with the Public” notes that, to control her agency, a female heroine must “shatter the mirror, disregarding her desire to please others, and she must cultivate a self-confidence that is strong enough to withstand public critique” (131). Throughout the novel, Cinder struggles to do just what Cothran suggests she must; it isn’t until the penultimate ball scene—important both in Cinder and in Perrault’s original—that Cinder faces her fear and winds up shattering the mirror, finding her independence. Cinder goes to the ball in an attempt to save Kai—and, effectively, New Beijing—from Queen Levana, the Lunar leader.

The confrontation, unsurprisingly, goes poorly and sends Cinder running from the ball. She falls, revealing her bolts and wires to Kai; he looks at her “momentarily as if he might be sick” (Meyer 364). In this moment, when Cinder is most vulnerable, Kai initially hesitates to help her. In fact, he won’t look at her. While Kai is of no help, Cothran notes that in this moment Cinder “must ignore voices (even in her own mind) that tell her she has no agency or power” (146). However, Cinder doesn’t do this. Cinder instead shrivels into her self under his glare and his words; Cinder allows Kai’s judgment to affect how she views herself. This scene toward the end of the novel obliterates the agency Cinder has built herself over the course of the novel. Kai declares what will happen to Cinder, where she will go and which sovereignty will decide her fate. Throughout this exchange, Cinder stays silent. She’s reverted back to Perrault’s Cinderella, to the woman who allows others to dictate her actions and movements.

Jonathan Oiley - Disney

In the end, Kai does not come to save Cinder, despite her hopes that he will. Instead of the prince swooping in to save the princess, Meyer allows the princess to choose whether or not to rescue herself. Dr. Erland, the “fairy godmother” of the novel, tells Cinder that she is the lost Lunar princess, giving Cinder the motivation to escape the prison cell. In this moment, Cinder separates herself from Perrault’s princess. Cinder, unlike her source material, has choice. She begins to turn her possibilities over in her mind: “It would be so simple to let it happen. So simple not to fight back” (Meyer 383). Cinder becomes incredibly relatable in this moment, as she struggles to accept the independence she sought for so long. The novel ends with Cinder preparing to break out of the jail cell she’s kept in; it ends with her finally taking complete control of her life. Cinder refuses to wait around any longer for a prince who may never come to her rescue. She’s ceased to rely on others, separating herself from Perrault’s Cinderella.

Cinder ultimately follows a young girl struggling to find her independence amongst and against large obstacles. Meyer uses close similarities and differences to demonstrate how difficult agency for a Cinderella is to achieve. By structuring New Beijing around a prejudice against cyborgs, Meyer makes sure Cinder, like the original Cinderella, has no agency in the beginning of the novel. Cinder, in order to achieve any independence, must struggle against the bias from the people around her and within her. Cothran notes that she must “embrace her intrinsic humanity, her intrinsic beauty, rather than using cultural standards as tools to determine self-worth” (146). Cinder starts to take steps toward this throughout the novel—when she creates the conditions of her deal, when she stands up for herself, when she decides to go to the ball—toward self-governance. Ultimately, Cinder does achieve agency by the end of the novel, accepting her selflessness and attempting to save the Prince and New Beijing whilst putting herself in great danger. Meyer’s ending truly rewrites the fairy tale: Cinder does not “get” the prince in the end, nor is there an obvious happy ending. There is no wedding, no poetic justice of punishment for the stepmother. However, there’s something stronger in this ending. Meyer makes clear that, whether or not she succeeds in escape, Cinder has finally become her own person. Her metal parts, her heritage no longer defines her; Cinder has broken free of the prejudice, survived the plague, and decided she didn’t need the prince. She’s changed from the passive woman to whom things happen and become a woman of action; Meyer’s Cinder finds the agency she needed and deserved and is on her way to a happy ending of her own, a happy ending that doesn’t need a prince or a wedding. Her happy ending merely requires freedom.

It’s important to recognize the context in which Cinder was published; the young adult literature market in the 2010s has countless narratives of young women struggling to find their independence. Blogger Rhiannon Thomas explains the popularity of young adult dystopias like Cinder:

Girls are told it’s their responsibility not to misstep, but almost everything is a misstep. The world is constraining and stacked against them. Is it any wonder, then, that dystopian novels became some popular? Just as girls are not allowed to break all of these contradictory rules, they’re also not allowed to criticize the rules (Thomas).

Cinder’s intended audience, teenage girls, would then relate to Cinder in the beginning of the novel. With her novel, Meyer took a familiar narrative of oppression and showed young girls that it’s possible to change the story, to change the ending; she also made it realistic, as her character struggles with accepting agency, both internally and externally. By deriving Cinder’s oppression not from her gender, but from her cyborg status, Meyer gives her readers distance to fully grasp the ridiculousness of this oppression. In an interview with Bustle, Meyer discusses her strong female character, saying she “wanted to write characters [she] found really interesting… It just so happened that in creating those characters it did end up playing on a lot of gender roles and subversions of those old archetypes” (White). Cinder’s subversion of her archetype folds her into a group of female characters—Katniss, Tris, and Hermione Granger—who teach young teenage girls how to find their own agency in a society that attempts to dictate their actions. Cinder ultimately separates itself from Perrault’s tale by having a heroine find the courage to save herself.